Everywhere I went in our home, I could still feel ${5GPronoun}. As I wandered aimlessly, I can still hear ${5GPronoun}'s voice, and it seems so real to the point that I hear a familiar voice calling my name, "Hey, ${1PName}," and I turn towards ${5GPronoun} and ${3GName}'s not there. Every time this happens, my heart is torn asunder all over again.
I cannot bear to live without ${5GPronoun}, but yet I don't want to die and move onto the afterlife. If there was anything I could do to bring ${5GPronoun} back, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I am so forgetful that it seems like I move things around the house, and then lose them. I've never been this forgetful, and I can almost hear ${4GGender}'s laughter when this happens. When I sleep, I dream of ${3GName}'s body pressed against me, the ${4GGender} curves and angles against my flesh. But it's over all too soon, and I wake up with tears staining my pillow.
As if to taunt me, a brochure arrived in the mail. A seance kit so that you could talk to your departed ones. I flipped past the title page that had in bold letters, "Yours for $10 a month, in four low payments!" What did I have to lose? So I sent the first check, and a few days later, an ornate box comes in the mail.
I'm astonished at how good quality the box is, and how old it seems to be. Strangely, it doesn't seem to be made recently. The box alone seems to be worth far more than the money I paid for it. With trembling fingers, I open it. Neatly arranged are the candles, the ouija board, and instructions.
Later that night, I steel myself and light the candles and begin chanting the ritualistic words that the instructions told me to utter, and made my wish known to ${3GName}, my dearly departed one -- that my beloved come back to me. A heartbeat, then another and another passes, and the wind howls in and blows out the candles. I'm stunned for a moment, before I realize that silly me forgot to close the window. After that, I light the candles, but nothing happens. Dejected, I go to bed to cry myself to sleep.
***
Something feels strange. I'm half-awake, and I feel a pressure of a ${4GGender} body against me. I look down in the dim moonlight, and see a familiar shape under the sheet, covered completely. My heart beats wildly, is it really ${5GPronoun}? Has ${3GName} come back? And I hear ${5GPronoun} ethereal laugh, so familiar yet so strange, and then, "